


Definition

by PoeticallyIrritating



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Drabbles, F/F, Tumblr Ask Box Fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-28
Updated: 2014-02-28
Packaged: 2018-01-10 07:55:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 4,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1157049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoeticallyIrritating/pseuds/PoeticallyIrritating
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of drabbles written from tumblr prompts based on obscure words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Quidnunc

**Author's Note:**

> If you're looking for a specific ship...  
> Soccer cop: chapters 1, 4, 6, 7  
> Propunk: chapters 2, 8  
> Cophine: chapters 3, 5  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: quidnunc, soccer cop
> 
> Quidnunc - One who always has to know what is going on.

They only spend the night at Beth’s place once. Alison can smell Paul in the sheets and the scent soaks into her skin. Beth swears she threw the bedding in the laundry; Alison’s mouth tightens. “Well, you didn’t use a dryer sheet, then, did you?”

“Ali…”

She can’t stop herself. “Where does he sleep?”

“In bed, Alison, what do you think?”

Alison breathes sharply in through her nose. “Which  _side_ , Elizabeth?”

Beth looks at Alison for a long time. “That side. Your side.”

Alison leaps out of bed like she’s been stung.

“Ali, what did you expect?” Beth sits up, leaning on her elbows. “He lives here.”

She’s pacing the room. The door to the closet is open and she can see a row of men’s button-down shirts on hangers. His toothbrush is visible through the bathroom door and she clenches up at the sight, making crescent indents in her palms. “Does he always brush his teeth?” she asks, wheeling around suddenly.

“Ali, I don’t—” But Beth, armed-and-dangerous Beth, falters when Alison advances. “Sometimes he skips at night.”

“Disgusting.”

“Ali. Please,” Beth says softly. “Come back to bed.”

“You want me in Paul’s bed. On Paul’s side.” She resumes her pacing, makes it once, twice across the room before speaking. “You and Paul  _slept together._  In that bed.”

“You’re being unreasonable,” says Beth. She pushes back the covers, swings her legs over the side, comes to meet Alison. Blocks her path.

Alison halts. “When?” She’s burning.

“When what?”

“You…and Paul.” She’s talking through her teeth now. “You know. When did—” Her chest is too tight to get words out.

“When did we last have sex?” Alison flinches. “It’s been a long time, Ali. Months.” She moves in closer. “Ali, just come back to bed. Stay close. Stay on my side, with me.”

Beth’s voice is soft. Steady. Alison clings onto it, clings onto _her,_  grasping at Beth’s strong arms with frantic frail hands.

“Or we can sleep on the floor, I don’t care.”

Alison holds tight to Beth. Breathes: in, out, in, out. “I can’t sleep on the floor,” Alison says automatically. “That would be ridiculous. There’s a perfectly good bed—”

Beth’s chest shakes with rare laughter. “Then come to bed with me.”


	2. Tarantism

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: propunk, tarantism
> 
> Tarantism - The urge to overcome melancholy by dancing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had no idea how to do this so it's really not-shippy and a little odd.

Sometimes Felix convinces Sarah to go clubbing with him, but it never works exactly the way he expects. Felix will dance with anyone, and he tries to get Sarah to at least come out on the dance floor, but she leans against the bar and buys shots until she runs out of cash. By 1 a.m. she’ll be taking out her rage on a dangerous-looking man against a black-painted wall and Felix tries to pry her away but sometimes he’s too far gone and sometimes he’s distracted by his own entanglements.

Rachel has made a note of all of this.

Sarah is sadder now that Kira’s been crossed off the list of the living. It was an unfortunate loss. The wealth of scientific knowledge in the little girl…but at least they got some useful data out of the autopsy.

That probably wouldn’t console Sarah, though. Sarah cries an average of twice daily and her alcohol intake has increased by one hundred percent. She smashes things more often, too, but Rachel doesn’t have a reliable way to quantify that yet. Rachel writes down words like “angry” and “sad” and she’s assured by psychiatric consultants that those emotions are perfectly normal for someone in Sarah’s situation.

The anger ebbs away over the days and weeks, and the psychiatrists explain again: it’s difficult to sustain anger. Sadness lasts longer.

Sarah seems to have given up fighting and Rachel takes this as an encouraging sign. She surely knows that her foster brother’s loft is under surveillance, but she doesn’t seem to care. Rachel receives transcripts of their conversations and makes notes.

_S.M.: Let’s go out tonight, Felix._   
_F.D.: Sarah…_   
_S.M.: Come on, Fe. I want to._   
_F.D.: I don’t want you to do something dangerous._   
_S.M.: I’m not going to self-destruct. Let’s get drunk. Let’s dance, Fe._   
_F.D.: You? Dancing?_   
_S.M.: Shut up. I know how to dance._   
_F.D.: [inaudible]_   
_S.M.: Well, then maybe I can prove you wrong._

Rachel finds out who to reprimand about the inaudible portion of the conversation. She sends someone more competent to follow them to the club. Sarah’s temporary monitor is equipped with a camera. Rachel has never before documented a desire to go dancing in this subject. It seems trivial, but Rachel has learned that a triviality can be a signal, can be more important than it seems.

When she arrives, Sarah has on the dark eyeliner that she has mostly neglected lately. Rachel sits at her desk, legs crossed, hands folded and resting on her knee, and watches. The camera follows the subject and her foster brother into the club.

“I need a drink,” Sarah says. The sound quality is terrible. Rachel makes a note.

It is twenty minutes before Sarah ventures onto the dance floor, and at first she just slumps and glowers. But Felix nudges her and eventually she begins to move. It’s jerky at first, and her feet don’t move in sync with the rest of her body. (Rachel knows, at least, about this. It’s no different from ballet in some respects.)

Some people move in the way of the camera and Rachel snaps into the monitor’s earpiece. “Get eyes back on the subject.”

Sarah has closed her eyes. Rachel squints at the other people in the image, trying to make out their eyes. Closing your eyes doesn’t seem to be standard practice.

And then, slowly, Sarah’s dancing loses its robotic quality. She becomes less angular somehow, losing the tension in her shoulders; her hips move with more fluidity than Rachel could have ever predicted. The music is loud, blasting scratchily into Rachel’s office. Too loud. Sarah doesn’t seem to mind, but Rachel has never liked loud noises. She turns the volume down.

_Subject briefly less sad,_  Rachel types into her notes.

She watches for a moment longer before deciding that she no longer wants to look. “Eyes off,” she tells the monitor. He obliges and the screen goes black.

Rachel bites the inside of her cheek and notices the tension in her own shoulders, the tightness of her jaw. Wonders what the psychiatric consultants would say about her.


	3. Lalochezia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Cosima, lalochezia
> 
> Lalochezia - The use of abusive language to relieve stress or ease pain.

“Come with me.”

They had just left Felix’s loft and Cosima could barely stand. She leaned against the door.

“Of course,” Delphine said. “I…do not want you to be alone.” She took Cosima’s hand. “Where is your hotel?”

Cosima stared blankly at the dirty green wall. She shook her head. “I don’t…remember.”

Delphine’s hand gripped hers more tightly. “Then we will go to my room instead.”

“Okay.”

Delphine called a cab and it wasn’t until they got inside that Cosima realized she was shaking. The cab driver was bald and her head jerked when she saw him, relaxing when she got a better look and saw no traces of a familiar face. Delphine held her.

_This organism and its derivative materials are restricted intellectual property._

Hopelessness made her limp. They spoke softly to each other in the car, but Cosima’s hands didn’t move. Delphine kissed the top of her head and she felt nothing.

But by the time they reached the hotel room she had found her rage. It made her hot. “Your face is red,  _chérie,_ ” said Delphine, and Cosima didn’t know what to say.

“Fuck.”

Delphine gave her a questioning look, wide brown eyes growing wider.

The energy had to go somewhere and it went to Delphine. Cosima reached for her, captured her lips and cursed into her mouth.

“Cosima,” said Delphine softly. She gasped the last syllable, in conjunction with Cosima’s teeth finding her pulse. “Cosima, I do not want you to do something that you would regret.”

“You said I can trust you.” She pressed Delphine backwards until her head hit the comforter. “So why should I regret anything?” Her fingers traced a sensitive spot on Delphine’s hip.

“ _Merde_ ,” she whispered.

Cosima echoed her. “ _Merde,_ ” she breathed into the skin of her chest, “ _merde, merde_.” Under different circumstances Delphine might have laughed at her accent but today she knew better. Cosima switched back to English and her fingers became claws tightening on Delphine’s back as she snarled  _fuck fuck fuck_ into the soft taut skin of her belly,  _deceitful fucking bitch_ as she bit down on her hip. She cursed more loudly at the button on Delphine’s pants that just wouldn’t come undone. She screamed into the air and then, as if she had used up all her energy in one outburst, she slackened. Her head came down to rest on Delphine’s stomach. Her breathing slowed.

“Cosima,” Delphine murmured, hand reaching, stroking Cosima’s cheek. She wanted to cry at the touch. “Come here, lie next to me.”

Cosima crawled up to rest her head on the pillow. She faced Delphine, their noses almost touching, and she slid her hands over Delphine’s bare back. She winced at the scratch marks, rough lines of sore skin that made Delphine bite her lip when they were touched. “I’m sorry, Delphine,” she said, tracing her hand slowly along Delphine’s side, trying to remedy her roughness with gentle touches. “I’m so sorry.”

“No,  _chérie_ , I am sorry I didn’t stop you.”

Cosima closed her eyes, letting her breathing slow into sync with Delphine’s fingers making gentle circles on her arm. She thought about the anger that had leached into Delphine’s skin and she held her tighter. She caught Delphine’s lips in hers again and formed words without making any sound:  _I love you I love you I love you_ and she might have even believed it.


	4. Basorexia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: soccer cop, basorexia
> 
> Basorexia - An overwhelming desire to kiss.

Sitting in Beth’s passenger seat, Alison let out the breath she had been holding since she had first picked up the gun. She could still feel the weight of it in her purse, but she was starting to like that feeling. It felt like teeth and claws.

Beth, cheeks pink from the cold air, managed a small smile at Alison before pulling out of the abandoned field where they had been shooting. Alison straightened her spine and reminded herself that a smile meant nothing. She was being ridiculous.

Her stomach knotted when she invited Beth in for a glass of wine. “Donnie’s gone for the weekend, and the kids are at my mother’s,” she said, and then cursed herself. “I just mean, so they don’t find out about the whole clone”—her lip curled at the word—“situation.”

“I got you,” said Beth. “I can come in for a while.”

Alison fumbled in the pantry, mumbling to herself about wines and finally settling on a bottle of average-quality red. She nearly dropped the wine glasses. If she could have given herself a pep talk out loud it would have gone something like:  _Come on, Hendrix, get yourself together. Beth is impressive but you are gee-dee impressive too and you don’t need to be so effing nervous._

Beth, sitting in a chair pulled up to the island in the middle of the kitchen, accepted her glass gratefully. Alison sat down beside her, leaving the bottle out. A glass of wine was never really  _one_ glass of wine, after all.

They didn’t talk for a while. Alison still felt breathless somehow, even though the car ride should have given her enough time to breathe, enough time for the adrenaline to subside. She looked upon the wine as a remedy. She was two glasses in when she turned to Beth and asked where _she_ had learned to shoot.

“Formally at the academy,” said Beth. “But my—” She seemed to hesitate. “My dad would take me out sometimes, and he’s the one who really taught me.”

“He was a cop?”

“No. Family tradition.” She didn’t seem to want to say more, and Alison let her be. She could respect that.

Three glasses of wine each, and the bottle was gone. Alison, despite half-hearted protests from Beth, fetched another from the pantry. “Maybe we should relocate to the couch,” said Alison. Her head felt light.

“That might be a good idea,” said Beth. She seemed to hold her liquor better than Alison (a potential area of study for Cosima, Alison thought), as she managed to juggle the bottle, her glass, and Alison as they maneuvered their way to the living room.

Alison sat on the couch, closer to Beth than she intended. Beth tucked her hair behind her ear and Alison had been trying to ignore it but her stomach was churning with the kind of anxiety and need that she hadn’t felt since the moments before she and track star Daniel Horowitz had made out in the backseat of his beat-up Camry her junior year.

Beth pressed her lips together and Alison tracked them with her eyes and tugged at her turtleneck self-consciously and ached.

She poured herself another glass of wine as a distraction and failed to notice the problem with that strategy.

Taciturn Beth became a little more talkative after she had finished that fourth glass, and she even cracked a smile or two. They talked about Beth’s work, and Alison worked at getting her fuzzy brain to remember what her book club had said about  _The Secret Life of Bees_ on Wednesday.

The talking didn’t make it any easier to avoid looking at her lips (her neck, her hands, oh God). “I can’t say too much because it’s an open investigation, but we’re actually dealing with some very interesting legal issues,” Beth was saying.

It was only a few inches from her mouth to Beth’s and Alison finally made the leap.

“I’m sorry—” she said, pulling away when her mind caught up to her body.

Beth grabbed her hand, interlocking their fingers. She bit her lip before leaning back into Alison, and Alison gripped her hand tightly and kissed back.


	5. Gymnophoria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: cophine, gymnophoria
> 
> Gymnophoria - The sensation that someone is mentally undressing you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I considered writing comparisons about Leekie vs. Cosima but it made me feel sick so instead I dove headfirst into the ball pit.

Delphine makes Cosima sit across the lecture hall from her. “You are  _distracting_ ,” she insists. Cosima feigns innocence, but winks. “You are so—what is the word?”

“Cheeky?” Cosima mock-suggests.

“No,” said Delphine, with a warning raise of her eyebrows. “You’re very close, though. I think what I am thinking of is _cheesy_.”

Cosima grins, flashing prominent canines. “Only a little.”

“Over there.” She points sternly to a seat on the far side of the room.

Cosima obliges, and when she reaches her seat she gives Delphine a little wave.

As the lecture starts, Delphine’s silenced phone lights up in her pocket.

_miss you already._

Delphine turns to Cosima, raising her eyebrows. The topic of the lecture is complex, not intended for the layman, and she has a small spiral notebook on her desk ready to take notes, but she has already missed half of the introduction.

She focuses on the speaker, a small woman with curly gray hair and three doctorates. Her research is mainly—what does Cosima call it?—evo-devo, but they’re going to dinner afterwards and Delphine has found herself frustratingly out of her depth when discussing certain aspects of her field of specialization. (Cosima is no immunology expert, either, but it is not immunology that is so desperately relevant to Cosima’s life and the lives of her genetic identicals.) The plan is to acquire more knowledge about the things that make Cosima’s eyes light up and her hands go into overdrive. But Cosima has a tendency to derail plans and when Delphine has filled half a page with notes and glances over just for a second, Cosima seems not to have taken her eyes off of her. And she is giving her a Look.

Delphine forces herself to look back at the lecturer, to look at her notes, but only a few minutes have passed before she turns back to Cosima.

Cosima is leaning back in her seat, just…looking. Her mouth is slightly open and she is twirling one of her dreads between her fingers.  _Merde. Cosima._ Could she be any more obvious? But Delphine’s teeth tug at her lower lip almost involuntarily and she meets Cosima’s eyes.

Delphine grips her armrest for support and the lecture seems to last forever. When it ends they meet in the middle of the milling people and Delphine snakes her arm around Cosima’s waist. “Perhaps we could, ah, postpone this dinner date?”

Cosima’s smile goes crooked. She kisses Delphine, traps her lower lip in her teeth for a moment before pulling away. “Totally.”


	6. Brontide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: soccer cop, brontide
> 
> Brontide - The low rumbling of distant thunder.

Beth liked to go running when there was a storm coming. The heavy, waterlogged air wasn’t good for long runs, but she liked to be out in it anyway. It felt like expectation and promise.

She started running when the clouds gathered, and she didn’t start heading back until the first raindrops began to fall. When she reached her front door again, she was flushed and soaking wet, breathing heavily as she leaned against the door frame. She could hear the beginnings of thunder somewhere far off.

Her pink phone, strapped into a waterproof armband just in case, began ringing.

“Ali.” She tried to angle her mouth away from the phone so her panting wouldn’t be the only thing Alison could hear.

“Beth?” The voice on the other end of the phone was nearly frantic.

“Are you okay?” Beth unlocked the door as she spoke, getting her phone call more satisfactorily out of the rain.

“Sort of. I mean, it’s silly, really.” She stopped.

“Ali, tell me what’s going on. Are you in danger?”

“No,” said Alison quickly. “No, no…I’m not in danger.”

“Then what’s up?”

There was a long silence. “Nobody else is home,” she said finally.

“Okay…” Beth waited.

“I just don’t really want to be alone right now,” said the small voice on the other end of the phone.

“I’ll be right over.” Beth eyed her reflection (sweaty, rained-on, in workout clothes), shook her head at its hopelessness, and grabbed her car keys.

She parked, as usual, around the block, and entered the house through the basement. It seemed Alison had been standing by the door; she opened it before Beth had even reached it.

“You’re soaking wet.”

Beth could almost have laughed. Of course that was the first thing Alison would notice. “Yeah, I went for a run as the storm was starting.” She could see Alison’s jaw working, trying not to complain that Beth was dripping on the carpet. “I had just gotten back when you called.”

“Well, we need to get you out of these wet clothes,” said Alison, and Beth grinned.

“Do we now?”

“Elizabeth Childs, you get your mind out of the gutter,” said Alison primly.

“Ali, I love you, but I don’t want to wear your clothes.”

Alison was clearly engaged in a kind of mental battle. “Fine,” she said. “But you are sitting on a towel.”

They sat on the basement couch, Beth curled up in a blanket, Alison sitting stiff and straight. Beth prodded her. “You can relax a little, Hendrix.”

“I don’t—like this.” She gestured vaguely. “It makes me nervous.”

“You need to be a little more specific.” Beth was determinedly casual, but the vagueness of “this” made her stomach clench with anxiety.

“The storm.” The words tumbled out of her mouth quickly, like she was trying to pretend she hadn’t even said them.

Beth relaxed, letting out her breath. Looking at Alison, who was still holding perfect dancer’s posture, she felt a rush of affection. “I thought you weren’t scared of anything.” She opened up the blanket and tugged at Alison’s sleeve until she nestled into the space beneath Beth’s arm.

“I’m scared of so many things,” said Alison. “Maybe everything.”

Beth wrapped the blanket around the two of them.

“You’re the crime-fighting cop. You’re the fearless one.”

Beth felt like crying but somehow she could never get tears out. Not even with Alison. “Not even close,” she said.

“You’re not afraid of thunder, though.”

“No,” said Beth. “Speak of the devil,” she murmured, as the rumbling grew louder and closer.

Alison’s hand moved to touch her cross and she buried her face in Beth’s shoulder.

“Shhh,” Beth whispered, holding her tight. She craned her neck to kiss the top of Alison’s head. “It’ll pass.” She said it again, almost to herself this time. “It’ll pass.”


	7. Mamihlapinatapei

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: soccer cop, mamihlapinatapei
> 
> Mamihlapinatapei - The look between two people in which each loves the other but is too afraid to make the first move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here there be few commas and even less happiness.

At night Beth wishes the fingernails digging into her palms were sharp enough to draw blood.

When she sleeps she curls up into herself and faces the bedside table. She tries to pretend that she’s alone, but Paul kisses her neck and every muscle in her body stiffens.  _What part of this body language makes you think I’m turned on?_ she wants to hiss at him. But her tongue is tired from speaking all day so she just pulls away and pulls away until she’s halfway off the bed. (Paul gets the hint eventually, lets out an annoyed breath. Beth likes heights more than she should these days and she leans over the edge for a second longer before retreating back to the mattress.)

 -

Alison goes to bed at exactly ten p.m. every night. Donnie sometimes stays up later, watching TV, and she misses his big warm presence. But when he’s gone she can pretend that she’s somebody else, and maybe for a minute think about Beth without crying.

Donnie thinks that he’s done something wrong because she never used to cry this much. He asks if she wants to change psychiatrists, maybe, or maybe she could try therapy instead of pills?

Alison looks him in the eye as she opens the medicine bottle. “I have it under control,” she says stiffly, and he knows enough not to say anything more.

 -

Beth never cries except for very late at night when Paul is out of town, and then she muffles her sobs with a pillow and when she has no more tears left she screams.

 -

Alison takes to a gun surprisingly well.

Maybe it’s not surprising, Beth thinks. Alison has a lot of sharp edges. Beth could see her wielding a knife.

 -

Watching Beth shoot, Alison feels her cheeks get hot. She presses the backs of her hands against them in hopes that the wind-chilled skin might bring down the flush in her face, but the worry of being discovered turns her even redder. She can feel it.

Beth doesn’t touch her while she explains shooting stance and hand positioning. Her hand gets close once and Alison holds very still, hoping for a twitch or a sudden gust of wind.

 -

It’s so fucking narcissistic.

Beth looks at her face in the mirror and feels unbearably heavy. Like there is something pressing down on her head and her shoulders.

(How can she love Alison and hate herself?)

 -

“Do you think someone’s really trying to kill us?”

They drink in Beth’s kitchen and Alison asks questions like this.

“Do you think we could be subjects in some kind of experiment?”

“I think someone’s done something really fucked up to us.” Beth doesn’t like to make conclusions without evidence.

Alison begins to cry softly into her hands and Beth sits beside her unable to move. She reaches out—once, twice—to lay a hand on Alison’s shoulder. Her muscles always seem to stop working before she gets there.

 -

They get drunk in Alison’s basement and Alison looks at Beth for a long time. Eventually Beth looks back, startled to see Alison’s eyes on her. But she doesn’t look away.

They’re close together on the couch and Alison wants to reach for her, touch her, but she thinks desperately of Donnie and she squints until she sees her own face in Beth’s and makes herself feel sick.

“I have to go,” says Beth. “I’ll call you.”

 -

The next time Beth’s name lights up her phone there is somebody else on the other end.


	8. Quidnunc/Basorexia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: propunk, quidnunc and basorexia
> 
> Quidnunc - One who always has to know what is going on.
> 
> Basorexia - An overwhelming desire to kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't figure out how to link, but this chapter was inspired by this three-sentence minific: http://sharkodactyl.tumblr.com/post/77764476180

The footage is from Sarah’s foster brother’s apartment—if you could call it an apartment, Rachel thinks, eyeing the dirty clothing and phallic artwork strewn around the single room.

Paul kisses Sarah, soft and slow. It isn’t in either of their natures. They end up in the foster brother’s bed, and what occurs is so gentle it can only be described as lovemaking. (Afterwards Sarah rests her head on Paul’s chest, breathing softly. Rachel’s stomach turns at the sweetness.)

» 

Two weeks later and Sarah has begun to turn him away. Paul isn’t good at “no.” He kisses her neck, shirtless in a way that is somehow gratuitous, and traces along her sides with his hands.

Sarah gives in but this time she fucks him hard and impersonal on a table.

When they’re done Paul says something about a kitchen table and Sarah says absolutely nothing. Her face is stony.

Rachel’s fingernails dig into her thigh.

» 

Paul is so dazed by Sarah’s repertoire of positions and locations that he doesn’t see the deadness in her eyes. Or maybe he chooses to ignore it. He takes Sarah’s aggression for passion and whenever they finish (or  _he_  finishes, Rachel notes disdainfully) he kisses her again. Soft and slow. Sarah goes stiff, every time.

» 

Sarah comes to her in the end. Rachel always knew she would. She’s all balled fists and fury but hate is so much better than indifference. (Rachel kisses harder than Paul ever did. She knows this for a fact. Her teeth scrape against Sarah’s lower lip and Sarah’s skin warms under her hands.)


	9. Apodyopis/Gymnophoria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: soccer cop, apodyopis/gymnophoria
> 
> Apodyopis - The act of mentally undressing someone.  
> Gymnophoria - The sensation that someone is mentally undressing you.

The first time Beth feels Alison’s eyes on her they’re at the shooting range. She’s demonstrating stance and hand position and she lets off three rounds into the center of the target; she turns around and Alison’s fingers are fluttering around her necklace. She’s much too flushed for someone who’s been standing still for the past ten minutes.

Beth’s breath catches in her throat and her chest burns with panic. She forces a laugh that echoes in the hollowness where a joke should have been. Hands the gun back to Alison. “Try again.”

Alison sets herself up and stares hard at the target.

“Trying to burn a hole in it, Ali?” The nickname slips thoughtlessly from her lips. Alison doesn’t even seem to notice; she strengthens her stance and shoots: once, twice. The second shot goes straight through the paper heart.

Alison turns to Beth, eyes shining, breathless.

“Safety,” Beth warns sharply. When Alison has secured it, Beth nods. “Good.”

Alison breaks into a smile at the word, and Beth aches.


End file.
